Add a contact

You can capture and organize information about people by saving new contacts in your address book. Contacts are like electronic cards that save a person's contact information. A contact can be as basic as a name and email address, or include more information like a street address, multiple phone numbers, and a profile picture.

You're in control of what information is added—and updated and removed—to a Contact card.

Once you’ve saved someone as a contact, you can type the first few letters of their name into an email, and Outlook will fill in their email address for you. Or with a few clicks, you can call that person without ever having to look up their phone number.

Open the message so that the person's name is shown in one of these lines: From:, To:, Cc:, or Bcc:.

Right-click the appropriate name, choose Add to Outlook Contacts.

In the window that opens, fill in the details you want to save.

Note: Outlook inserts the contact's email address in the Email box, and any other information about the contact that's available in the message in the appropriate boxes. If a contact is in your organization, that probably includes their title, department, phone number, and office.

You can save more than one phone number, email address, or mailing address for someone.

If you haven't added the contact before, create a new contact. Otherwise, open an existing contact.

Click the down arrow next to E-mail, any of the Phone number fields, or the Business address, and then select one of the other options from the drop-down box. For example, to add a second email, select E-mail 2. To add a TTY/TDD phone number, click the arrow next to any of the phone fields and select TTY/TDD.

Import contacts from a .csv or .pst file A .csv file contains contacts you've exported into a text file, where each part of the contact's information is separated by a comma (.csv means "comma separated value").

A .pst file is a file exported from Outlook into a format that another computer running Outlook can read.

You can create a new contact from an existing contact by using the existing contact as a template, and then changing any of the information, as necessary.

In Contacts, in Business Cards view, click the contact that you want to use as a template.

Note: You can also complete this procedure in the Address Cards and Detailed Address Cards views.

Press CTRL+C, and then press CTRL+V.

In the Duplicate Contact Detected box, select the Add new contact option.

When you save a contact or an Electronic Business Card with the same name or e-mail name as one that already exists in your Contacts folder, Microsoft Outlook displays a dialog box with options to either add the duplicate contact as a new contact or update the existing contact with the new information from the duplicate contact. To find out more, see Resolve or delete duplicate contacts.

Click Add.

The new contact will appear in Business Cards view next to the contact you copied.

Double-click the new contact to open it, and then edit the information, as needed.

When you save an Electronic Business Card received in an e-mail message, you create a new contact. If you already have a contact by the same name, you can save the duplicate as a new contact or update the original.

In an open message, right-click the card, and then click Add to Contacts on the shortcut menu. The new contact opens in the contact form.

On the Contact tab, in the Save group, click Save & Close.

If you already have a contact with the same name, Outlook detects the duplicate. Do one of the following:

Select Add the new contact. This creates a duplicate contact, including a contact form and Electronic Business Card.

Select Update the information. Existing duplicate contacts are listed. Double-click the contact to update it, and then update the information on the contact form and save it.

The new contact information is now saved in Contacts and is available as an Electronic Business Card as well as in other views. You can make changes to the contact information both before and after you save it. To make changes to the card after you save it, see the instructions in Create Electronic Business Cards.

Notes:

You can also right-click the attached .vcf file in the message header to open the shortcut menu and add the contact or choose other options.

If you click the Save & New option in the contact form, the open contact is saved, and a new, blank contact form opens.

When you want to create multiple contacts that share common information, such a company name and address, you can copy an existing contact, and then change the contact copy to include the unique information for the additional contact.

In Contacts, right-click the contact that you want to duplicate, and then click Copy.

Keyboard shortcut To duplicate a contact, press CTRL+C to copy, and then press CTRL+V to create the duplicate contact.

Double-click the new contact to open it, and then edit the information.

Other Outlook users might include an Electronic Business Card in an email message. When you save an Electronic Business Card, the information that is contained in the card is used to create a Outlook contact.

In an open message, right-click the Electronic Business Card or the attached .vcf file in the message header, and then click Add to Contacts.

Edit the information as needed.

On the Contact tab, in the Actions group, click Save & Close.

If you already have a contact who has the same name, do one of the following:

Click Add the new contact. This results in two contacts for the same name.

Click Update the information. In the list of duplicate contacts, double-click the contact that you want to update with the Electronic Business Card information.

You can use contact folders to organize groups of contacts. Create a new folder in Contacts, name it, and move or copy specific contacts. Your contact folders will be listed in the Navigation Pane under My Contacts.

In Office Outlook 2007, each of your contacts is also displayed as an Electronic Business Card. Any information that you add to a contact is automatically made to the corresponding Electronic Business Card, and vice versa.

1. A contact form that contains Jon Morris's information.

2. A view of the Edit Business Card dialog box, with the corresponding fields filled in for Jon Morris's Electronic Business Card.